I saw Parasite with Lauren in theaters yesterday and while I have linked you to the Amazon Prime page where you can rent it to watch, I would highly recommend the theater experience based on my own enjoyment of the film. I read that this past weekend (its 19th of release), the movie grossed about twice the amount of its previous best weekend (its 5th of release) due to a significant boost from the Oscars, which was what ultimately motivated me to see it, despite not having watched the Oscars at all, and so I suppose if you have not seen it yet, next weekend will be a popular one as well.

I will endeavor to write the next sentence about the movie without giving anything away for those who have yet to see it, rendering unnecessary any disclaimer of a spoiler alert. My two favorite dialogues were the one about schizophrenia at the kitchen table and the one about planning after the rain.

Related to the latter of the two aforementioned dialogues, when it comes to planning, I think there is a logical truth in the idea that the only plan that never fails is no plan at all. I do value a lifestyle based on spontaneity. More than most, I enjoy playing things by ear and going with the flow, especially on weekends. Still, to consider planning to be useless and point to frequent failure as a rationale for never making any plan at all I think would be a disservice to self for most people. I believe that short-term plans can be very useful, mostly because they can be achieved with a higher probability of success than a long-term plan. I do not make many plans further than 3-6 months out, and if I have a plan or two that extends beyond a year or two, I generally understand that it is very much subject to, and in fact, more likely than not to change. It takes discipline not to plan because planning projects purpose and purpose brings comfort. In the long run, however, not planning too far ahead can actually make life more comfortable because one will not try to force the happenings of life down a predetermined path that may loss its sensibility over time. Whether one does not make plans at all or simply maintains a willingness to change them to me is not very important, but a plan without compromise is a plan destined to fail, most of the time, I have come to believe.

Taking that all into consideration, for the foreseeable future I will plan to title my Monday blog posts "The Weekend Miscellaneous", and to write a bit about some miscellaneous things from the prior weekend including places to eat, movies to see, and anything else I feel like writing about really.

Valentine's Day Movies - Besides Parasite, which I should explicitly say I thought was excellent and rightly deserving of all of its acclaim, I saw one other movie this weekend. Before Sunrise (1995) is the first in a romance trilogy that also includes Before Sunset (2004), and Before Midnight (2013). I am not familiar with any other trilogy in which the intervals between releases are 9 years and the leading actor and actress remain the same and so that aspect alone I find to be pretty intriguing. I have not seen the second or third of the series but the first was somewhere between good and great for me. A google search of the third in the series brings up a top notch assortment of other movies in and around the love story genre including Titanic, The Notebook, Her, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, all of which are firmly in the category of great movies which I recommend more highly than Before Sunrise, which I also recommend.

Valentine's Day App - Bedford is a messaging app designed exclusively for a person and his or her significant other. It was created by Joshua Kushner (investor / entrepreneur / Jared's brother) as a Valentine's Day gift for his wife Karlie Kloss (fashion model / entrepreneur). I am not sure how much more time, money, or effort Joshua plans to invest in the app but I actually think it could have tremendous success and I recommend it to anyone who is intrigued by the concept. I wrote the company to give two small pieces of critical feedback that the automatic deletion of the messaging history should be optional and the ability to send gifs should be added.

F&F Pizzeria - this is a pizza shop that opened last fall in Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn. The two Franks for whom the pizzeria is named already had a very successful duo of establishments on the street and the addition of this pizza place between Frankies 457 Spuntino and Frank's Wine Bar makes it a trio. Black Gold Records sits between the pizzeria and the wine bar and I imagine the owner feels like he has the Community Chest between the three green avenues on the Monopoly board. I found F&F on my twitter feed thanks to this tweet from Fred Wilson, the Union Square Ventures co-founder whose blog served as the initial inspiration for me to create mine. The garage looking space with quiet outdoor seating in the back serves very high quality New York slices, with or without cheese, as well as Sicilian squares, though they were out of those when we were there on Sunday. While I love all pizza, I generally prefer Neopolitan to New York style and it is tough for me to compare a pizza in one style versus the other. That said, in the New York category, F&F ranks up there with the best of them.

Di Palo's - on Saturday, we picked up a few things from my favorite Italian meat & cheese shop in the city. Di Palo's also carries stellar selections of pastas and sauces, frozen raviolis, crackers and cookies and other items for the cabinet as well. It is on the corner of Grand & Mott just off the main Mulberry strip of Little Italy, and it is a phenomenal place to go and pick up at least a quarter pound of prosciutto and some cheese.

The Weekend Miscellaneous #1 (Parasite, Planning, Before Sunrise, Bedford, F&F, Di Palo's)